Electronic communications such as Short Message Service (SMS) messaging are being increasingly used for both business and personal uses. Electronic communications have many advantages over non-electronic communications such as postal mail. These advantages include low cost, rapid delivery, ease of storage, and so on.
Generally, SMS is a wireless service that allows for point-to-point communication of short text messages (160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters) to and from wireless digital communications devices, such as mobile phones. Within the SMS service, an SMS message is transported via store-and-forward transport mechanisms, such as Global System for Mobile (GSM) mobile telephony network, Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), etc., to a Short Message Service Center (SMSC). The SMSC attempts to deliver the SMS message to the recipient. If the recipient of the SMS message (the SMS message recipient's digital communications device) is not reachable at a given moment, the SMSC will store the SMS message for subsequent delivery. Later, when the recipient is reachable, the SMSC retries the delivery process. Thus, the SMS service allows an active subscriber unit, such as a mobile phone, to transmit and receive an SMS message at any time.
In many SMS markets, SMS service providers currently charge their subscribers on a per message basis. For example, a subscriber is charged a flat fee, such as ten cents U.S., for each SMS message sent or received by the subscriber. Because a single SMS message is typically limited to 160 7-bit characters, SMS messages that are longer than 160 characters are sent as multiple SMS messages, with each one of the multiple messages being charged the per message rate. Thus, with the current limitation on the amount of text that can be sent in a single SMS message, sending large amounts of text using SMS messages can quickly become impractical due to the associated cost.
Moreover, with SMS messaging, the receiver of an SMS message receives the exact text that was input by the sender of the SMS message. Many subscribers use digital communications devices such as mobile phones to send and receive SMS messages. Unfortunately, many of these devices only include a 12 button numeric keypad instead of a full alphabetic keyboard. Using a limited keypad for inputting an SMS message requires substantially more effort (e.g., it is cumbersome and time consuming to type a character using the 12 button numeric keypad because multiple characters may be assigned to a single key in the keypad). To overcome this problem, a subscriber may input a cryptic SMS message that is less cumbersome and time consuming for sending as an SMS message. Because the receiver of the SMS message receives the exact text that was input by the sender, if the receiver of the cryptic SMS message does not understand the “lingo” used by the sender, the receiver of the cryptic SMS message will not be able to translate and understand the cryptic SMS message.